Thomas Sowell wrote the following article at realclearpolitics:
Back in the heyday of the British Empire, a man from one of the colonies addressed a London audience.
“Please do not do any more good in my country,” he said. “We have suffered too much already from all the good that you have done.”
That is essentially the message of an outstanding new book by Jason Riley about blacks in America. Its title is “Please Stop Helping Us.” Its theme is that many policies designed to help blacks are in fact harmful, sometimes devastatingly so. These counterproductive policies range from minimum wage laws to “affirmative action” quotas.
This book untangles the controversies, the confusions, and the irresponsible rhetoric in which issues involving minimum wage laws are usually discussed. As someone who has followed minimum wage controversies for decades, I must say that I have never seen the subject explained more clearly or more convincingly.
Black teenage unemployment rates ranging from 20 to 50 percent have been so common over the past 60 years that many people are unaware that this was not true before there were minimum wage laws, or even during years when inflation rendered minimum wage laws ineffective, as in the late 1940s.
Pricing young people out of work deprives them not only of income but also of work experience, which can be even more valuable. Pricing young people out of legal work, when illegal work is always available, is just asking for trouble. So is having large numbers of idle young males hanging out together on the streets.
When it comes to affirmative action, Jason Riley asks the key question: “Do racial preferences work? What is the track record?” Like many other well-meaning and nice-sounding policies, affirmative action cannot survive factual scrutiny.
I am not a ‘soccer’ fan. I find it incredibly boring. True it’s ice hockey without skates and ice, the college variety my favorite of all team competitions (outside of watching the Vikings win their usual two games a year in the NFL).
The first ‘major league’ soccer game I attended was in Kiev of the good old Obamalike USSR of government-enforced corruption, poverty and fear the summer of 1966. Kiev Dynamo was playing against Odessa or Moscow before 60,000 in near total silence winning 2-1 or so. Whistling or boozing was not in style in the culture sculpted by Stalin and company. There was so much room for sudden lifetime vacations in Siberia.
Flipping across the television channels I checked in to the semis of the world ‘soccer’ championships, Germany playing against Brazil in the South American nation’s capital. In most of these games hours go by waiting for a score. Occasionally refs seem to matter who scores. But, in the world soccer championships the games are usually exciting despite the absence of scoring goals anytime soon.
Germans have had a rough time in the world ever since Roman days……especially since they finally established their state in the 1870s after which my mother’s part of our family began their treks to midWest America. Dad’s folks came to the MidWest from Cherryfield, Maine, and to the New World via the Mayflower a few years earlier. I was fascinated by the ‘foreigners’ in the German part of our family during my youth especially during those years when the entire clan met twice every year, 150 or more strong at Tanner’s Lake Pavilion near St. Paul, Minnesota when and where they felt ‘free’ to speak their native tongue…….the only occasions when even my otherwise totally American Mother spoke German. I include this touch of personal family history to explain why I root for Germany during world championship soccer games.
Within a minute of watching this zero-zero game Germany had apparently scored against host team, Brazil. (Good, I thought. Germany’s ahead and has a chance to win….at least make the game a good one to watch……but I moved on through the channels looking for something else to root for. …..true crime stories, for instance, including those caused by the Obama government. Nothing interesting so I returned to Germany and Brazil, and it was already 2-0.
I didn’t want to get involved or excited. My son and I have had Minnesota Viking NFL tickets for nearly 20 years and have been programmed to expect the eventual loss no matter what score an early lead. I again turned to other channels, and again returned to the German-Brazil game….and it was three-zip and I hadn’t seen a single goal!
Garden duties called me outdoors. I felt Deutschland had a pretty good chance of winning to move into the championship game this coming Sunday. When I returned to the game to check the score Germany was ahead 7-1…..and suddenly the game ended. The scoring highlights were featured again and again…..and I have to admit, whatever the Germans had eaten for breakfast that day must have yielded extra vitamins to exert team play, for I have never seen more beautiful attack patterns in soccer or similar team ‘field’ games. What an impressive performance. So, I present the following World Cup news by Gabriele Marcotti:
BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil — Eventually, you run out of ideas.
At 1-0, the yellow-clad population of the Estadio Mineirao groaned. A bloody nose, yes. But stick some cotton in and suck it up.
At 2-0, there was incredulity. A young lady in the stands raised her hand, thumb in, digits extended over her open mouth.
3-0 and 4-0 were one and the same. Two stabs from Toni Kroos in the space of 69 seconds, the fastest brace in the history of the World Cup. Like burning yourself on a hot stove and then stubbing your toe when you jump away in pain. Hurt and more hurt. No time in between to react. But afterward, it was defiance. Chants of “Bra-sil! Bra-sil!” Not lame but full-throated, perhaps as a way of venting anger at the players.
At 5-0, folks began to make their way to the exits. Twenty-nine minutes had passed. Read it again. TWENTY-NINE. But people had seen enough. It wasn’t a majority, obviously, not even a significant plurality, but enough that you would notice. They filed away silently, looking away from the pitch, a yellow goo oozing toward the stairwells.
Halftime was predictable: boos and cat-calls rained down mercilessly and echoed in the cavernous Mineirao. If, prior to kickoff, the ground’s acoustics had amplified the Brazilians’ sound, now — after five goals — it was a roar.
At 6-0, the wrath seemed focused on one man. Fred, the mustachioed centre-forward who for the past weeks had flailed in carrying the torch passed on by the legendary Selecao strikers of yesteryear, from Ronaldo and Romario all the way back to Pele and Artur Friedenreich. In truth, the insults, expletives and bile vomited in his direction had begun at the start of the second half, perhaps when the realization he was still on the pitch hit. They rose to a crescendo after Andre Schurrle made it six, and Fred laconically made way for Willian.
At 7-0, it was simple. They rose as one and offered up an ovation. Schurrle’s goal — his second — was pretty, but it wasn’t Diego Maradona-against-England-in-1986 pretty. Were they applauding him? The Germans? Were they being sarcastic? Was it all of the above? Or was this merely the last possible reaction they could think of, having exhausted all others?
By the time Oscar fixed the final score at 7-1, there had been scuffles in the stands (at least five distinct ones — all among Brazil fans — visible from the press tribune). There had also been a period of “oles” at every German touch. Fans do this when they’re well ahead, either to celebrate their own side’s supremacy or to mock their opponent’s futility (“See? They finally strung two passes together.”). This was different.
It was perhaps as unprecedented as a nation with five stars above its crest losing 7-1 at home in a World Cup semifinal.
There is no script for this. It’s virgin territory for everyone involved. You don’t know how to react. Luiz Felipe Scolari, looking as if he had sailed with Charles Marlowe into the heart of darkness (only, instead of finding Kurtz, he found Kroos), insisted afterward that life goes on.
It does. It just won’t be the same.
“We tried to do what we could, and we did what we thought was best,” he said. “But in six or seven minutes, they scored three or four goals [four in six minutes actually, but you wouldn’t blame the shell-shocked Scolari for getting it wrong], and they did it in an extraordinary manner. It was one after the other. We tried [from the bench] to talk to them, to get them to stop for a second, but we just could not.”
In a situation such as this, you wonder if it’s even worthwhile talking about tactics. Schemes and formations, after all, often mutate after one goal, usually after two and, well, when you’re 5-0 down inside the time it takes to watch a rerun of Glee, there really is no such thing anymore.
Scolari was devoid of his best player, Neymar, and his captain and defensive stalwart, Thiago Silva, but to his credit, he didn’t use the absences as an excuse. “It would have made no difference,” he said. “What was Neymar going to do?”
Scolari tried to channel emotions and turn a negative into a neutral or maybe even a positive. David Luiz and Julio Cesar held up the missing talisman’s No. 10 jersey, and even the mascots (“player escorts,” as FIFA like to call them) sang their little lungs out during a raucous rendition of the Brazilian anthem.
Scolari had gone for the jugular, with the same 4-2-3-1 formation he’s played throughout the tournament, which many thought he’d abandon against the Germans. Little Bernard, all 5-foot-5 of him, the hometown hero, slotted into the wing, with Oscar shifting inside while Fernandinho and the returning Luiz Gustavo were ready to do battle. There were moments in the first few minutes when it looked like the old-style 4-2-4 Vicente Feola might have used in 1958.
But that lasted until the first German goal in the 11th minute, when David Luiz somehow lost Thomas Muller in the penalty box and gifted him the easiest of side-foot finishes from a few yards out.
“Everything was organized, everything was calm until the goal was scored,” Scolari said. “Then everything became disorganized, everything was panicked.”
For his part, Joachim Low offered up the same formation that beat France — with Phillip Lahm tucked in at right-back — but with one crucial tweak. When he saw Scolari’s lineup, he shifted Sami Khedira from his role alongside Bastian Schweinsteiger in front of the back four to one further forward next to Kroos. 4-2-3-1 became 4-1-4-1 or, if you like your lingo, from triangle up to triangle down.
Kroos-Khedira became a two-man gang of outlaws plundering the Brazilian passing lanes and scything their way past the feeble yellow barriers. They prompted the next four goals, including the one that allowed Miroslav Klose to become the all-time leading scorer in World Cup history by passing Ronaldo’s mark of 15.
“They suddenly were not so well organized, they were hitting long balls, and we took advantage,” Low said. “We hit them with fast counterattacks, and we knew that it would cause them problems.”
The game was over at halftime, except for the record books that would record Schurrle’s brace and Oscar’s strike. (Don’t call it a “consolation goal.” Don’t you dare.)
Afterward, David Luiz apologized in a tearful television interview. Oscar was a fountain of tears too, alternately cuddled by Thiago Silva, himself bawling, and Schurrle, his club teammate. Julio Cesar said that, in place of this, he would much rather have lost 1-0 while making the mistake that cost his team the game. That way, there would only be one scapegoat.
“I am responsible,” Scolari said. “I pick the team, I prepare the team. Though if you ask my players, they will also say they’re responsible because we are a team and we share victories and defeats. But for me, when I look at my life as a player, a coach, a teacher … yes, it is the worst day of my life. I will be remembered as the man who lost 7-1 in Brazil in a World Cup semifinal.”
Low was as magnanimous as he could be, given the circumstances. After all, eight years ago, as Jurgen Klinsmann’s assistant, he too saw his team come up short as host nation in a World Cup semifinal.
“I know how Scolari feels,” he said. “I remember 2006 and losing to Italy and the disappointment of a nation.”
He was being kind. As gut-wrenching as 2006 might have been to Germany, giving up a goal in the 119th minute of a match is not the same as giving up five within 30 minutes and losing 7-1, after 39 years of avoiding defeat in competitive matches on home soil.
Low knows there isn’t much you can take from this game, other than the result. His men found themselves in a freakish situation, they kept their heads, and they executed. If he’s concerned about his troops being grounded and not getting carried away, he can take solace in the words of Kroos.
“For a minute, we had trouble believing we were really 5-0 up,” he said. “I mean, when do you ever win a semifinal 7-1?”
“But we have one more game to go,” he continued. “Nobody has ever become world champion in the semifinals.”
Those are the words of a young man who knows what he wants and knows how to get — and they’re just what Low wanted to hear.
Germany and Brazil entered a Twilight Zone on Tuesday. One nation emerged to find itself 90 minutes from becoming champion of the world. The other has wounds that won’t heal for a long time.
For once Barack Hussein tells the truth confessing “I can’t work with others.”……and possesses the arrogance to add, “Sue me”.
The following article was written by Debra Saunders at realclearpolitics:
“In January, President Barack Obama outlined his strategy for 2014. “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone,” he said. The president planned on using his pen to sign executive and administrative orders and his phone to call outside groups — not Congress — to rally behind his pet programs.
Obama forgot to mention his third favorite instrument — the teleprompter. Rather than working with Congress, Obama’s second term is all about blaming Congress for whatever goes wrong. In that can’t-do spirit, Obama mocked House Speaker John Boehner’s threat to take legal action against the White House’s imperial ways. “So sue me,” Obama said to laughter. As long as House Republicans are “doing nothing, I’m not going to apologize for trying to do something.”
We have an opportunity to protect the genetic privacy of every newborn citizen. Newborn screening is a government genetic testing program run by the states, and partially funded by the federal government. Democrat U.S. Senators have “hotlined” HR 1281, the anti-genetic privacy “Newborn Screening Saves Lives Reauthorization Act of 2014” (NBSSLR Act) bill that:
Does not require parent consent for state government storage, use, analysis and sharing of Baby DNA taken for newborn screening
Provides $99.5 million for state newborn screening programs that don’t require parent consent for Baby DNA storage and use.
Encourages use of newborn DNA to develop new genetic tests for newborns (research) – no parent consent
Encourages screening of children for conditions not yet approved for newborn screening (genetic research) – no parent consent
Federalizes the state newborn screening programs by standardizing state data collection and surveillance.
Before HR 1281 comes to the floor of the U.S. Senate, please email and/or call your U.S. Senator. If this House bill passes the Senate, it will go directly to the President for his signature. The Senate author of the NBSSLR Act is Sen. Kay Hagan (D-North Carolina).
TELL THEM:HR 1281, the newborn screening bill passed by the House and now waiting for a Senate floor vote, should forbid federal funding to any state that does not require written informed parent consent for storage, use, analysis, and sharing of the child’s DNA (blood spot collected for newborn screening) and the child’s newborn screening (genetic) test results.
They need to hear from you. Most have no idea what’s happening after newborn screening is done. Here’s a troubling story out of Indiana today showing the reality of state storage of Baby DNA….and how states are giving the DNA away without parent consent.
Feel free to send us their responses. One CCHF supporter has already sent us the letter he got from his U.S. Senator.
Help us raise the issue of parent consent — and increase the chance of an amendment — before the bill comes up for a vote. CONTACT INFO FOR YOUR U.S. SENATOR: http://www.contactingthecongress.org
Thank you for your help!
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Twila Brase, RN, PHN
President and Co-founder
Citizens' Council for Health Freedom (CCHF)
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